"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Well, there is a way for a transformative "East of the River" arts district, now that I think of it...

A comment in the previous entry reminded me of a proposal I developed back in 2003 and 2004 for an "arts district" community program involving the local schools in the H Street NE neighborhood.

There's no reason that the idea couldn't be applied East of the River, to prove my previous entry, that Anacostia long term couldn't really develop into an arts district, wrong.

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Back then I was chair of the promotions committee for H Street Main Street, and one of my committee members, Vanessa Ruffin, a life-long DC resident, made the very good point that an "arts district" shouldn't be limited to the commercial strip of H Street but should extend outward into the neighborhood beyond H Street. (In fact, one of our ideas was realized by Conner Contemporary Art Gallery re-locating to an old auto repair shop on Florida Avenue.)

The idea was in part to capture lower cost spaces, because H Street has a pretty limited inventory of space. The idea was also to focus on artist development and support--arts as production, although I didn't call it that at the time--not just arts patronage.

And, a big focus was on how to re-focus the local public schools around all aspects of the arts, to help reposition and improve the schools: Maury; Miner; Wilson (which has a well-respected French language program); Ludlow-Taylor; Wheatley; Gibbs; maybe Eastern High School, etc.

It was to take the Capitol Hill Cluster Schools concept ("Neighborhood Schooled" Washington City Paper) but creating a different kind of focused cluster, around the arts.

The idea was that each of the elementary schools would focus on a specific foreign language and the culture around it, plus a wide variety of programs in visual, media and digital, language, and performing arts.

There would be a program of artists-in-residence, and three public buildings that were then unused (a building on the Miner school campus now used by the police for administrative purposes, the old Engine 10 firehouse, since converted into market rate housing, and the old Precinct 9 police station, since converted into market rate housing) could have been used for arts purposes too, for example, instead of moving to Mount Rainier when the city took over where they had been located for the baseball stadium, the Washington Glass School could have had one of the buildings, etc.

Plus the RL Christian itty bitty library could have been converted into an arts-focused library to leverage the presence of the Atlas, the H Street Playhouse (then, anyway), and in an idea I expressed separately in 2002, when the Children's Museum was still on the corridor, a children's focused theater and library like Charlotte's ImaginOn.

And the idea was that the various language programs at the schools (French, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, etc.) could work to link up with cultural programs sponsored by cultural organizations (such as the Mexican Cultural Institute or the Goethe Institut) and embassies.

Anyway, given that DC Public Schools is closing so many schools in wards 7 and 8 (see "Gray releases 16 D.C. public school buildings for reuse by charters" from the Post) and my intent to write a position paper sometime this year on creating a wide-ranging innovative program to end structural poverty East of the River, ARCH, the community development organization leading the arts district charge in Anacostia, could take up my old H Street idea and apply it there.

It's more of an arts-based community revitalization program, not so much a focus on arts as consumption.

But there are groups to leverage:

1. the radio station that ARCH is developing could be part of a broadcast media program, but community radio is cool too, or they could try to recruit WPFW (see "WPFW No Longer Moving to Silver Spring" from the City Paper)
2. They could connect up, network with, and leverage the award-winning Town Hall Education and Arts Center in Ward 7
3. Along with their new Anacostia Arts Center
4. Plus the independent Anacostia Playhouse, etc.
5. The Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum (which is in need of a re-boot)
6. Space available at the St. Elizabeth's East campus
7. And there is an incredible auditorium still remaining on the St. Elizabeth's West Campus (probably will always be off limits)
8. Develop a small movie facility like the Grand Illusion in Seattle (2003 article from the Seattle Times)
9. Frederick Douglass Historic Site
etc.

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Funny thing, apparently I sent a letter to the editor of the City Paper about this general idea on 9/102004. I don't know if it ever ran, but I found it in the archives of the anc-6a yahoogroup. It's reprinted below:

Chris Shott (Show & Tell, 8/27) and I probably have a lot in common. We’re card-carrying members of the creative class. We’re smartasses. We have high expectations, and we share the belief that many D.C. government initiatives, including the U Street arts zoning overlay, don’t set very high expectations. Where Shott and I probably disagree is about possibilities, creating great visions, and committing to work to achieve such visions.

Culturally driven urban revitalization is hardly a new phenomenon, even in D.C. We can see it especially along the 7th Street NW corridor from Pennsylvania Avenue past New York Avenue, at establishments such as Olsson’s, the Zenith Gallery, and the Shakespeare Theatre’s Lansburgh Theatre; in attractive neon signs in restaurant windows such as Andale’s and Jaleo’s; up the street to the latest incarnation at Ruppert’s; and in the artist studios in back alleys and loft buildings, many of which are now being lost to the real-estate boom and 21st-century urban clearance.

Even if the city government doesn’t try very hard to achieve best practices in the zoning aspects of cultural development, there’s nothing to prevent the Greater H Street neighborhood from setting high expectations and looking to other models and best practices, most often in other cities, for guidance in creating, setting, and implementing our own agenda.

Programs such as the Creative Alliance @ the Patterson in the Highlandtown Arts District and the wide variety of programs in the Station North Arts District, both in Baltimore; the variety of initiatives and working studios in the Penn Avenue Arts District in Pittsburgh; and the Via Colori street-chalking festival in the Short North Arts District in Columbus, Ohio, provide examples of how an arts district can be far more inventive with storefront spaces than the pharmacies, banks, and auto-parts stores that are allowed under D.C.’s pretty weak zoning overlay. Incentives are key. Baltimore provides a best-practice example with property and other tax-incentive programs that are specifically targeted to arts-related businesses and activities. Not to mention Artscape, a great model for an H Street Arts and Humanities Festival.

As everyone knows, real-estate prices, even in the H Street neighborhood, are pricing out artists. One way to address this problem, and to have greater impact besides, is to expand the idea of an arts district into the neighborhood beyond the commercial corridor. A proposed Negro Leagues Baseball Museum on the 900 block of 12th Street NE is in keeping with this idea. Properties along Florida Avenue such as Jimmy’s Tire provide great opportunities for arts-oriented reuses. So do properties in Trinidad, which for the time being are still cheaper than houses in the neighborhood to the south that more and more real estate agents are branding “SoFlo.” (I, for one, don’t favor that moniker.)

Another way to extend the impact of an arts district, and to leverage the presence of the Language Doctors translation service already present on H Street, is to work to improve the public schools in our greater neighborhood by creating a “cluster schools”–type initiative centered on visual, performing, and media arts, design, and language. This proposal would be comparable to but different from the extant Capitol Hill Cluster Schools or the Spanish-language program at Oyster School. Other neighborhood cultural resources that can contribute to this effort include our neighbor Gallaudet University and the possibility of an expanded community library, which could take on an arts-and-culture orientation.

The idea would be to include Ludlow-Taylor, Wilson, Miner, Gibbs, Wheatley, maybe Webb and Maury, and so forth in this initiative. Wilson Elementary already has a well-regarded French program, and the idea would be to expand this concept to the other schools with languages such as Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, German, and more. This could have the happy benefit of adding a more international dimension to the greater neighborhood. (This is in keeping with the history of the neighborhood, which in its first 75 years mixed African-Americans, Irish, British, Scots, Italians, Germans, Russians, Greeks, and a smattering of Chinese and Japanese.)

Another aspect of the arts district concerns the streetscape, façade improvements, and other aspects of the built environment. First, complementing its successful Expressive Signs Project, the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities is working out a project for artistic redesigns of H Street bus shelters. Second, H Street Main Street has applied to the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development’s funding programs for H Street façade improvements. Awardees have not yet been announced, but we have our fingers crossed. Third, the D.C. Department of Transportation has planned $30 million of streetscape improvements, with construction anticipated to start sometime in 2006.

Add to this mix the probability of a streetcar/light-rail line connecting all of H Street to Union Station, and then to downtown and Georgetown, which will make getting to H Street much easier for people from throughout the region—giving them one less excuse to skip out on a great performance at the H Street Playhouse or the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

It’s not a stretch to take a chance on the H Street Arts and Humanities Festival. It is an opportunity to shape how people respond to and participate in the arts, both citywide and at the neighborhood level. Check out www.hstreetdc.com/festival if you want to learn more.

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About Me

I am an urban/commercial district revitalization and transportation/mobility advocate and consultant and a principal in BicyclePASS, a bicycle facilities systems integration firm, based in Washington, DC. Urban economic competitiveness is dependent on efficient transit and mixed use, compact places. Therefore, I end up writing mostly about mobility and urban design. While I am based in and write about Washington, DC issues, I try to write so that "universal lessons" are evident in the entries.